The shale gas industry is demanding the right to frack without landowners’
consent to stop opposition groups exploiting a legal loophole that threatens
to paralyse drilling for years.

It has emerged that drillers need landowners’ permission if horizontal wells —
typically extending several thousand feet deep and across — pass beneath
their land, or risk being liable for trespass.

The legal precedent was set three years ago in a case brought by Mohammed Al
Fayed, the former Harrods’ owner, after the High Court ruled that a company
drilling for oil under his Surrey estate had trespassed.